This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,769 for Thursday the 12th of January 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Crouching Laptop Hidden Server Part Zero.
It is part of the series' virtualization.
It is hosted by some guy on the internet and is about 14 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is virtualized battlegrounds.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm your host, some guy on the internet and I'm here with Artor 72.
Alright, so we're here with Artor 72.
He just posted something amazing in the chat room and I was like, oh man, we got to
talk about that.
It's not fully put together yet, but we're going to discuss it anyway because it feels
good to get in on the ground for before the machine is fully assembled.
So Artor, why don't you tell us a little bit about which post it in chat?
There's, it had no laptop instead of a Poxbox server on it and I just got the install
and made one change since I had installed it.
So we're running Poxbox ladies and gentlemen here here now, Poxbox on a laptop.
What kind of specs are we talking about here, Artor?
I believe in I3, but I'd have to go back in the notes and the earth in the computer and
look up the specs.
Roughly in I3, you got a good idea for the amount of RAM we're going to have on this
bad boy?
Or are you playing the upgrading it in the near future or are you?
No, I think 8 gigs a RAM, I can't remember what I have.
Ooh, that's, that's going to be a close one right there.
8 gigs?
What's the, uh, what's the plan?
What was the minimum number of VMs you're thinking you're going to be able to get on this
thing?
Three Pots boy?
Let me look at the web UI, it probably tells you about the RAM it is.
So if we're looking at about 8 gigs a RAM, 3 VMs, that's going to be kind of close.
From understand this Poxmont system, has Debbie in as a base?
That's right.
I don't know, it's showing on the UI that I only have 4 gigs on RAM.
That's weird, I thought I'd put more in there.
That's going to be playing it very close.
That will.
I think I need to get more RAM.
You've got to have some extra LAN around, right?
No, I have to look at the specs closer and see what I can put in it.
Well, for a laptop, I wouldn't go above.
Well, if it's a guy 4 in it now, I'd just slap an 8 gig steak next to it and call it good.
I could do that, so we might have to get back together later.
Oh no, this is still going to work.
We've got a roughly an I3, 4 gigs of RAM, that means you can still get 1 VM off the ground
for now, right?
Right.
All right, now.
That 1 VM that we're talking about, what are you playing I'll do with?
I think I'll start with Arch, because it's pretty lightweight, actually.
That's the funny thing is that's where my username comes from, because I used Arch for six
years or so.
Ooh, so we got a little background story here.
Using the name plus the district, you're going to be running on it, and I'm assuming this
is going to be Arch headless.
Yes, it is.
Now, oh boy, Arch headless, what are you going to be running on a headless arch system?
That sounds pretty crazy.
I like you said it's the ground floor, so I don't quite know what I want to do yet.
I just saw a video on how to do proxmox, and I thought it might be an interesting challenge
to do.
I'm thinking a little crazy.
What do you say you just run it out there on the wild for a little while on the open
net?
Like maybe Hosta, Hosta next cloud, and since out there.
On Arch?
Baby?
Yeah.
I mean, well, with four gigs, it'd be kind of tight with the lamp stack, so maybe not.
Maybe not a next cloud, that might be a bit tight.
Yeah, it is.
You kind of build it up as you go, and that's why I had liked it before, and I don't remember
what happened, but I tried to talk about Slackware, and so I was like, oh, I'll try
that.
I still like both.
I never used Slackware, and I've only set up Arch once a long time ago in the VM, but
I didn't actually use it as a system.
I just wanted to say I set up Arch.
Any chance we can convince you to self-host something out there in the wild on the
raw, untamed internet.
Yeah, sure.
What's worth of trying?
Now, this is going to be great.
My laptop that I'm going to be running, it's an HP.
And it was cheaper HP laptops that have the, what is it, the I3 in it?
This is the model 14-CK0052CL.
Mine is an Intel Core I32350 CPU with 2.3GHz.
I think we're running roughly the same type of system here.
Right, that's about right.
Now mine, the last time I checked, I think I got either 8 or 16 gigs in there.
Maybe you've had 8 and I put 16 in it because I still got laptop RAM from other older
laptops or whatever.
It's managed running a boom to 20.0.4, and I'm thinking I'm going to put this puppy out
there and the wild as well.
I'm going to be taking a different approach using some of the documentation I got from
Red Hat.
Well, yeah, I tried Vert Manager to the, it's a second level hypervisor.
I'll list the difference between ProxMox and Vert Manager's, Vert Manager's, our ProxMox
is on the bare metal.
All right, here we go, I just found it right here.
All right, so it's going to be using a Vert Manager with a QEMU in KVM, or you use Vert
install to create your disks or not your disks, your VMs, so the real documentation I found
for building and setting up your VMs just all from the command line is excellent.
They obviously won't either run it on a rail or sent to our stream or whatever, but the
same package is work over on a boom to as well.
So that's the route I'm going to go with it, and I'm doing it mainly just to get my command
line flew up there, because the other method was just use a Vert Manager, the GUI, build
your VMs there, and then migrate them over to the system, and then run them that way.
That's what I was doing through the GUI, so far, yes, I didn't have to do anything after
the install, just plug in my Ethernet, and then after that, log in, d.com, and comment
out those things where you can, so you can close the lot, they are laptop-load.
Oh, yeah, I've got to definitely hit up that log in, d.
Yeah, that did work, I haven't put that in one out later.
With my setup, getting started, I'm going to have to install the package, it's QEMU-KVM,
the package libvert, and the packagevert install, and from there I'll be able to use a couple
of simple commands to build the VM.
This laptop isn't going to be running large VMs obviously, so I guess it'll be like,
you know, I'll just be testing it on small and medium.
Now have you toured with any of the bridging in ProxMox to be able to get this thing out
on the network that the VM?
I know, I've just gone as far as the login d.
That is going to be interesting as well.
I really want to know how this process is going to work with me, just trying to do it
off from a command, just trying to set up a bridge, and get this thing, it's an IP
on the network.
I was just wondering the same thing, because I can't even get a basic VM, I got VM tiny,
missing some of the functionality of VM.
Oh, in your VM, you already got launched?
Yeah, they have a web interface, web UI, they have a place you can go to the show.
I was using that to change my login.d.
That's one of the things I like about it.
With that UI, you get that flexibility of like using a VPS, you know how you can
jump on the node or wherever and use the list terminals that they have online.
So with ProxMox, they're giving you that same flexibility, but on the land using the web
tool.
All right, so we just got back, we were looking at a few bits of documentation, and anything
interesting you found there, Archer?
No, you found more documentation than I do.
Yeah, I mean, we both stumbled across some really good bits and pieces.
A couple of YouTube videos and lots of docs from ProxMox.
It seems that they allow you to, let me go and pull that up here.
So from the ProxMox website, if you were to, from the main page, go over to the download
tab at the top, scroll all the way down.
You'll then find the downloadable PDF documentation, which gives you a lot more information
to work with.
So even if you haven't downloaded and ran ProxMox yet, you can get that documentation
at least get a good peek at what you'd be getting yourself into if you were to use ProxMox.
And Archer ran across a lot of other wonderful docs out there from, there's a site called
Bob Cares that has some great information on breaking your VMs out, setting up that virtual
bridge and some V-laying information.
That's all going to be included down into the show notes.
And also the YouTube link.
That's where I actually got what got me interested in the beginning.
Right, right, because that YouTube link shows just how easy it is to get set up in ProxMox.
And Archer, you pointed out something earlier about how lightweight it is, could you tell
us a little bit about that?
I apparently only have four gigs around and I thought I had more, but it's only running
using one gig around.
So we're talking about a system with four cores and four gigs of RAM.
You loaded up ProxMox on there as your operating system, which is a deviant base with
a hot with the ProxMox hypervisor.
You're only running right now, up and running with only one gig of RAM.
That's true.
That means in the future when you're ready to expand, you've got plenty of room to,
you know, plenty of wiggle room to give your VMs more a project, well, maybe not too much
processing power, because it's a 93, but you don't have to starve them on the RAM side.
No, it has four gigs of swap too, and I'm guessing that will change if I add more
RAM.
Yeah, I think for now, because you're limited on the RAM, they're probably putting
that swap in there as a good idea, you know, any services start filling up that RAM pretty
quickly.
You want some swap?
I think it creates that automatically.
I actually made no changes except for that, like I said, log and D. Next up is to expand
the storage from the video, yeah, delete one of the volumes and then expand the remaining
volume.
But I didn't do that yet.
We're going to take two approaches here, ladies and gentlemen, Arch is going to be using
the fantastic ProxMox with all this wonderful documentation right here.
I mean, honestly, I'm kind of jealous, just looking at it. It looks great. It looks
easy. There's lots of nice videos to help guide you along. This is, this is wonderful.
I'm going to attempt something similar. I'm going to be running a boon too and do a mine
through the command line, but I'm very jealous of this UI, and I'm thinking for a UI
of my own, maybe running a cockpit. I think a boon too has a version of cockpit that can
be downloaded and installed and you know, quickly configured to run on the network.
And from cockpit, maybe I won't be able to set up VMs from there, but I can still migrate
VMs over to the system if I need to from my desktop. I'm going to try to do it all through
the command line. They'll just get the system set up that way and just use scripts whenever
I want to lob a new VM. And of course, I'm going to put it out on a great wide open.
So in a future episode, when me and Archer get back together, I want us to have some information,
you know, our highs and lows of this entire setup and some information on what to expect
when running on your home network. Alright, so Archer and I just ran through a little bit
more documentation, finding some great DNS services out there. And Archer and you want to
recommend duct DNS. If you don't mind that Google is one of the login options and get home.
Well, for what we're doing, I think it'll be just fine, but for those of you out there listening,
depending on what kind of services you're running and what information you're moving through
those services. If you're not running something like wire guard to encrypt that traffic,
I think you're going to want to be careful, but look, it's a service that's available at
no cost to the user. And notice I did not use the word free because we are in the product. Indeed.
Well, Archer, we did a great job bringing up a lot of information for the folks to have something
look forward to. You run in proxmox on a devian-based system. And with the current stats in your box,
let's go into a quick reminder, going to be running at I3 with four gigs of ram currently
with an upgrade in the future, hopefully. And any other information you want to add on top of that?
Just that the web UI is pretty user friendly. Yeah, here's hoping we can also get a little bit of
containerization later on. We have to wait and see how that works. We have to first make it out
the gate. I'll probably crash and fail and weeping the night away and switching over to proxmox
as well. But I won't do so without giving it a go. So that'll wrap it up for today's episode.
You guys, thank you all for listening. I'm some guy on an internet here with I372. And we're out
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